


unintentional.

by kupokisses



Series: Arcane Drabbles [1]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Comfort, Developing Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, but like just a bit it's not that serious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 03:05:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20251135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kupokisses/pseuds/kupokisses
Summary: Mahala should have fixed her focus.





	unintentional.

“You’ll get a discount on the next magical item you order, I promise. Again, I’m so sorry for the inconvenience-”

“Inconvenience,” the customer repeats with a scoff and snatches the pouch out of Mahala’s hands.  “ For all this trouble, I oughta get my next FEW items FREE.”

Mahala resists the urge to explain why giving away several free items would be bad for business. Instead she follows the customer as they storm to the door and opens her mouth to bid them farewell, but they’re already interrupting her with an,  “IF I come back here AGAIN!” before they slam the door behind them.

“And a good rest of your day to you, too,” she tells the empty shop.

With nothing left to do and closing hours approaching, Mahala puts away the materials she’d used to redirect the customer’s charm. Embarrassment burns at the back of her throat and stings at her eyes, but she shakes it off with a physical shake of her head as she closes a cabinet door. 

“You handled that well.” 

Mahala keeps her eyes on her work as her master enters from the back room, Faust loose around his shoulders.  “For a moment I thought I'd have to cast a banishing spell to get them to leave .”

“Yeah, well...” she mutters, tucking things away into the shelves behind the counter,  “It wasn’t like their tirade wasn’t justified.”

“Justified or not, they had no right to yell at you.”

Mahala would beg to disagree. Love spells were always tricky and she knew that, but she’d accepted the order anyway instead of redirecting the customer to Asra. On top of that, she didn’t even give the customer what they’d asked for. 

She figured a glamour would be better suited to the customer’s needs and executed it accordingly, aligned the spell so it would mold to their desired appearance and draw others near. That part was easy, effortless.

It was charging the pendant with the appropriate energy that she’d messed up on. Instead of visualizing women being drawn to her this time, she’d imagined someone else instead, someone entirely different.

It was no wonder the customer had returned the very next day, demanding to know why they couldn’t stop thinking of fluffy hair and dark eyes and dimples and… well...

She totally deserved that shit. 

Mahala sighs and lights some sage. “ It’s whatever, anyway. I fixed it. It’s dealt with.”

“It is,” Asra allows cautiously, but he knows his apprentice too well to think she would drop something that upset her this much so quickly. “But you still seem upset... Tell me you're not mad at yourself?”

“Fine, I won’t tell you that.”

“Mahala…”

Asra sighs and approaches her, wrapping his arms around her from behind. She doesn’t move to return the gesture - which is fine, he wasn’t expecting her to - so he only holds her tighter.  “You’re still learning. You can’t beat yourself up for that. You’re still an incredibly skilled magician.”

Mahala huffs and fidgets in his arms, thankful he couldn’t see her reddened cheeks from this angle.  “You’re biased.”

“I’m honest,” he insists.  “You’re perfectly fine. Besides, I don’t want to sell to a customer like that anyway.”

He presses a kiss to the crown of her head, and Mahala tries to discreetly close the page in her grimoire on charging things with purpose when her intent was so close by.  “You’re still biased,”  she says, and turns to smirk up at him.

“You’re still amazing,” he smiles.

A moment passes and it feels long to her, charged, electric, as Asra keeps his eyes on her, his arms around her. It hadn’t even been a whole minute like this and already she felt more at peace than she had in an hour, sage and cleansing and smudging aside. If only he knew the effect he had on her, knew who the pendant had initially been drawing in…

Ashah, her familiar, mews and curls himself around her leg then, and she is grounded and gently pushes out of Asra’s arms to finish cleaning. Asra watches her for a moment, lazily setting an arm on the counter to let Faust slither off his shoulders and onto the cool glass. 

He’d heard most of the customer’s complaint, but curiosity pokes at him and he figures he should ask Mahala just to be sure. “What happened with their order again?”

“Oh, uhhh…”  she falters in setting something atop one of the higher shelves.  “They asked me to make them more attractive, and I, uh… I may have accidentally given them a crush on someone, when I did that.”

Asra smirks. It wasn’t like Mahala to make a mistake like that, but to unintentionally place an intent like that could only mean… “Oh?”  he asks.  “Who did you give them a crush on?”

“Not relevant.”

“Who do  _you_ have a crush on?”

Mahala bristles and whirls to pout at him.

“Not relevant!”

**Author's Note:**

> Mahala is my fan apprentice for the visual novel The Arcana. She'll be appearing in more works to come!


End file.
